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Effects of Wildfires on Outdoor Black Carbon Level to Indoor Air Quality
DARIA PASHNEVA, Julija Pauraite, Agnė Minderytė, Inga Garbarienė, Vadimas Dudoitis, Kristina Plauškaitė, Simonas Kecorius, Gediminas Mainelis, Jurgita Ovadnevaite, Steigvilė Byčenkienė, SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology
Abstract Number: 111
Working Group: Wildfire Aerosols
Abstract
Wildfires are significant source of fine airborne particulate matter (PM2.5), but little is known how indoor air filtering systems are performing under intensive smoke conditions. For this aim, black carbon equivalent mass concentration (eBC) was measured in a modern office with a mechanical ventilation system. Measurements took place from 30th September to 6th October 2020 in the urban background environment in Lithuania. Aethalometer (Magee Scientific, AE31) and Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (TSI 3321) spectrometer used in this study were connected to the sampling system which automatically switches sampling from one environment to another every 30 minutes. During measurement campaign an intensive pollution episode, related to long-range transport wildfire smoke, was observed. The results indicated that smoke event increased both indoor and outdoor eBC mass concentrations twice. Air filtering efficiency was found to be highly dependent on particles size. Particle number size distribution and particle mass-weighted size distribution in indoor and outdoor air together with their averages for the event and non-event days will be presented. Acknowledgment: This research was funded by a grant (No. S-MIP-20-28) from the Research Council of Lithuania.